With a boom box hanging from one shoulder, an old mailbag with his possessions slung over the other shoulder and a walking stick in hand, Junebug Jabbo Jones strolls onto the stage at the Painted Bride Art Center. The bearded, middle-age black man is dressed in denim overalls topped by a sport coat. A red bandanna is tied around his throat, and a brand new trilby hat sits jauntily on his head. He looks like an odd mixture of working man, tramp and sport. Junebug is the creation of actor John O'Neal, the star and only performer in Don't Start Me to Talkin' or I'll Tell You Everything I Know: Sayings From the Life and Writings of Junebug Jabbo Jones.

The vice-presidential candidacy of Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, should evoke alarm, not celebration, in the American Jewish community. As admirable as his religious views may be to many fellow believers, Jewish and Gentile alike, what really defines Lieberman is his repudiation of the Jewish tradition of secular humanism and support for social and economic justice. Since arriving in the United States in large numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the vast majority of Jews have been secular humanists who have championed public education and social insurance programs for the sick, poor, disabled and elderly.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's easy slide to victory in the Brazilian election this Sunday may be prevented by the disillusioned people in the social movements who originally put him in power. "We may vote for Sen. Heloisa Helena in the first round of the election," said Marcus Arruda from the Institute for Policy Alternatives. That could prevent Lula from getting more than 50 percent of the vote and force him into a runoff on Oct. 29. Heloisa Helena Lima de Moraes is a former member of Lula's Workers' Party.

Caroline "Cary" Isard, 91, of Drexel Hill, an advocate for social justice, died of pneumonia at Delaware County Memorial Hospital on Wednesday, Dec. 1. Her husband of 68 years, Walter Isard, died Nov. 6. In 1956, Mrs. Isard and her husband, an economist who had just joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, moved to Drexel Hill. The corner property with seven bedrooms had plenty of room for their large family and a history appropriate for the new owners, who were Quaker civil rights activists.

African American Women and Religion By Bettye Collier-Thomas Alfred A. Knopf. 695 pp. $37.50 Reviewed by Marla Frederick Bettye Collier-Thomas' Jesus, Jobs and Justice is a tour de force for the study of women and religion. It navigates within and beyond the walls of institutional religion to delineate the tremendous contributions of African American women of faith to the larger American project. Collier-Thomas, professor of history at Temple University, makes the convincing argument that it was, indeed, the amazing networks of organizations that women developed in the 1920s and '30s that laid the foundation for the success of the civil rights movement.

Charles Coates Walker, 83, of Cheyney, an advocate for peace and social justice, died of complications of diabetes July 11 at Barclay Friends Nursing Home in West Chester. In 1991, after more than 50 years as a peace activist, Mr. Walker traveled to India to receive the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation Award, which recognizes those who promote the nonviolent ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. During World War II, Mr. Walker, a Quaker and conscientious objector, went to jail rather than fight.

VATICAN CITY - While the Vatican has picked the highly disciplined Jesuits as advance men for planning papal pilgrimages and to run its worldwide broadcasting network, the notion of a Jesuit pope is still being absorbed in the Holy See. Before Pope Francis, no one from the nearly 500-year-old missionary order had been pope. Previous popes have punished Jesuit theologians for being too progressive in preaching and teaching. The last pontiff, Benedict XVI, sent a polite but firm letter inviting the order's worldwide members to pledge "total adhesion" to Catholic doctrine, including on divorce, homosexuality, and liberation theology.

George Tamaccio, 62, a man of conviction who loved this country and Philadelphia yet chose a prison term instead of fighting in Vietnam, died Dec. 21 of lymphoma at Vancouver General Hospital in British Columbia. Mr. Tamaccio moved to Vancouver Island in 2005 after decades as an activist in Philadelphia-area political, environmental and social justice causes, such as opposing nuclear energy and overdevelopment, and advocating clean water and urban housing. A longtime resident of West Mount Airy, Mr. Tamaccio was a sought-after political consultant who got out the vote through door-to-door canvassing of thousands of households, and was a leader for decades in citizen-action groups seeking to change government policies.

It was an unfortunate incident, but one that propelled artist Michelle Ortiz into a career as a muralist dedicated to social change: Ortiz was a teenager, one of the few Latinas in her private high school. Fresh from art class, she went to the school store to look for a gift for her sister. The teacher in charge told her to stop handling the goods. "She told me, 'Don't touch that because your hands are dirty,' " Ortiz recalled of the conversation in 1996. Ortiz looked at her hands, puzzled.

About 200 people marched and prayed in Center City on Saturday, the latest in weeks of demonstrations sparked by the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and other black men at the hands of police. And though the protest at City Hall and LOVE Park echoed previous rallies - chants of "I can't breathe," signs declaring "Black lives matter!" and a "die-in" symbolizing lives cut short - a religious aspect ran through the event. It was organized by Muslims and began and ended with prayers.

SOMETHING beautiful happened last night at Mother Bethel AME Church. In the wake of the massacre that left nine dead Wednesday night at Emanuel AME Church, a sister church in Charleston, S.C., the parishioners were not solemn during a memorial prayer service at Mother Bethel, the original African Methodist Episcopal church. In fact, they cheered together with folks of several faiths as the church choir delivered a rousing rendition of Richard Smallwood's 1996 hymn "Total Praise. " As the choir began to end the song, Mother Bethel's own the Rev. Mark Tyler took to the podium and began to speak.

You may be surprised to learn the theme of Philadelphia's next TEDx conference could best be summarized by a pop song. But then you'd be underestimating the creativity of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), which draws inspiration from all quarters of culture. Called "And Justice for All," TEDx Philadelphia 2015 (that small x denotes a locally organized, as opposed to national, TED) will bring 14 speakers to the Temple Performing Arts Center for a daylong conference Thursday.

The Mann Center for the Performing Arts opened its season Saturday afternoon not in sylvan Fairmount Park but amid the golden glow of Mother Bethel AME Church's stained glass, its audience in the fervent communion of common purpose. Baltimore and social justice were on everyone's lips, even if nothing so specific could have been foreseen when plans for the concert were first laid. It was the kickoff of the Mann's Liberty Unplugged! festival, the music center's months-long focus on Frederick Douglass, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela, and so it was. But social justice being the unfinished business it is, by the time these musical performances and poetry readings reached the stage, they had gathered a new, grievous urgency.

In a city of 8.3 million people, they kept finding each other: on random subway lines, at two different birthday parties in the East Village. Of course, those meetings weren't complete coincidence; both Annie and Yosef were students at Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary, studying to become rabbis. Friends noticed the spark before they did. Yosef kept protesting, "But Annie and I are such good friends," and buddies would retort, "Don't you see, you're not just friends?" Finally, he saw. After a few months of dating, they were inviting one another to their families' Passover celebrations.

Lou Ann Merkle intends to be shorn of something precious, something that helps define her as a woman: her hair. She's not doing it as a fashion statement, or because she's ill. Merkle plans to have her head shaved to protest the killing of young black men by white police officers. She and friend Sylvia Metzler will surrender their locks as a highlight of a Martin Luther King's Birthday march that organizers say will bring 10,000 people to Center City. In doing so, the two will embrace a symbol of grievance and mourning that stretches through societies and cultures back to the Old Testament.

About 200 people marched and prayed in Center City on Saturday, the latest in weeks of demonstrations sparked by the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and other black men at the hands of police. And though the protest at City Hall and LOVE Park echoed previous rallies - chants of "I can't breathe," signs declaring "Black lives matter!" and a "die-in" symbolizing lives cut short - a religious aspect ran through the event. It was organized by Muslims and began and ended with prayers.

ISSUE | HOME TEAM Christie's playing wrong side of field Gov. Christie cannot be elected president, and it isn't because he could not win a Republican nomination battle fought largely on the right. Christie has doomed himself in a general election because no politician whose base of support is in the Northeast could afford to lose Pennsylvania, and no one can win Pennsylvania without faring well in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, where the bulk of the state's voters live.

Leaders of the National Urban League announced a $1 million grant to the organization's Philadelphia chapter and voiced concern Friday about fatal shootings by police in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City that have sparked protests over the last two weeks. With Mayor Nutter and U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) standing by, Marc H. Morial, president of the league, announced that the chapter would receive the five-year commitment to boost its programs for job-seekers, entrepreneurs, and youth development.

Her father's polygraph machine drew her eye each time she passed her parents' bedroom, a sleek silver briefcase she knew could read her thoughts. "He would always say to us, 'I hope you're telling me the truth,' " Kristen Ruell said. " 'Because you know I can check.' " It was a playful threat. But it seems to have served its purpose. Ruell, a 39-year-old from Philadelphia, became a national voice in the call for accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs last week when she spoke before Congress about mismanagement at the Germantown VA center where she works.

When Debora Kodish arrived in Philadelphia in the early 1980s with her new doctorate in folklore from the University of Texas, there was no one in the city documenting everyday life in its many and varied neighborhoods. No one organization was looking at what the African drummers were doing, what the Hispanic street artists were up to, what the Vietnamese musicians were playing, what the Italians in South Philly were saying - or at why they were doing what they were doing and saying what they were saying.